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On Friday, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand published the definitive story about last month’s blowup between ESPN Monday Night Football announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman that has sent sports media observers into a frenzy of speculation about Aikman’s future in broadcasting.
Options are looking slim for Aikman. In the weeks following the initial report about the rift between Buck and Aikman, CBS removed the interim label from J.J. Watt’s title and named him the network’s lead NFL analyst through the 2028 Super Bowl. Meanwhile, Kirk Herbstreit seems to be locked in with Prime Video, barring someone like Sean McVay leaving the sidelines for the booth. Fox’s Tom Brady has a contract extending well into the 2030s, and NBC’s Cris Collinsworth has a contract of his own through decade’s end.
Absent a new deal with ESPN, there doesn’t seem to be a landing spot for Aikman in a top booth next year.
And based off of Marchand’s recent report, it seems like the relationship between Buck and Aikman is almost certainly too far gone for the duo to extend their long-running partnership beyond this season.
The relationship reportedly turned fraught in September, when The Athletic reported that Joe Buck had signed a contract extension with ESPN, an extension that Aikman was unaware of. Buck’s deal, it was later reported, was finalized in the spring, and Aikman felt betrayed that Buck withheld the news from Aikman. The tension boiled over in the Monday Night Football booth last month. Buck reportedly tried to initiate a conversation about the elephant in the room by saying to Aikman, “You are not going to f*cking talk to me?” adding later, “I’m not the reason you don’t have a contract,” alluding to Aikman’s history of poor treatment to the MNF production staff and a revolving door of lead directors and producers as the impetus for ESPN’s decision to delay contract negotiations with Aikman.
Aikman retorted by telling Buck, “I just never thought you’d do it to me.”
The duo has successfully completed two Monday Night Football broadcasts since news of their fractured relationship initially broke, and those unaware of the news would be none the wiser. Both have been professional calling games, and their work seems to more or less be unaffected.
But as details continue to trickle out, and the storyline becomes more mainstream, there’s certainly a risk that the relationship can deteriorate past the point of no return. In that case, ESPN might need to find an analyst to replace Aikman midseason.
Marchand, appearing on a recent episode of The Varsity podcast with John Ourand, believes there’s a non-zero chance this happens, though he doesn’t forecast it as a likely scenario. Asked what percentage he’d give that Aikman is in the booth for ESPN’s broadcast of Super Bowl LXI in February, Marchand said 95%.
“I’ll put that at 95% he does it, 5% he doesn’t,” Marchand replied. “Look, they’re professional, but it’s ugly. We’re not helping [by] talking about it. We’re not helping [by] writing about it. …These things happen and then maybe it shifts internally, you know, they read an article in The Athletic and they say, ‘Wait, why aren’t we just bringing these guys in a room and figuring it out.'”
He continued: “The other 5% from him not doing it is that people are like, ‘Wait, what the hell. Who’s talking? What’s going on. I’m mad now and da da da,’ and it causes it to go the other way.”
The interesting thing about 5% chances is that they happen about 5% of the time. So while the last couple weeks of Monday Night Football would seem to indicate Buck and Aikman can make it through to February without issue, there’s an element of unknown that could push things in another direction.
And for that reason, you can expect the amateur body language experts online to continue parsing every glance and chuckle shared between the two for the rest of the season, looking for any sign that the unthinkable could happen, and ESPN could find itself searching for a new analyst just weeks before its first-ever Super Bowl broadcast.